I ride “B” races, and I do relatively good. But at the beginning of the race there are riders that go extremely fast for the first several minutes. I can keep up with them for the first minute or so at 380-400w, but not several minutes.

I have an old cycleops mag trainer, and Im not blaming it, but with the resistance knob at the bottom and the jerky movement, I feel that I could do better with a fluid trainer. It’s more or less the same thing at the end of the race: I start sprinting to the finish line at 400+w, but it’s never enough.

So my question is: will I do better with a fluid trainer of is it a figment of my imagination?

Im asking becuase I found a used cycleops fluid2 at a decent price, but I don’t want to buy unless I know it’ll make a difference.

You might just have less top-end power than some of the people you’re racing against. (Keep in mind that, also, not everyone enters the appropriate category.)

The only ways a fluid trainer might help are if:

You’ve tested your trainer with a power meter and know that your power on Zwift is consistently low (unlikely, but possible, and only relevant if you’re not already using a power meter), or

You see your power “flatlining” and/or you keep spinning out, meaning that you’re in your hardest gear and still can’t get the amount of resistance you need to do well. This would signal that while your legs could give it more, the trainer won’t let you put down the power.

If you were talking about short sprints, then it might make more of a difference, because one might be more sluggish to respond than the other (I’m not sure which, but the stored power curve tries to account for that). But you’re talking about minutes. If you have any harder gears left that you’re not using, it’s likely that the people you’re chasing are just faster than you. I know that feeling, haha! If you want to work on this, you could do workouts with hard intervals lasting 2-6 minutes each. They’re not fun, I’m afraid…

I would suggest looking at this (http://www.powercurvesensor.com/cycling-trainer-power-curves/) and find a trainer that is Zwift compatable and has a power curve that go into the 700w-800w .
Look at the Kinetic Road Machine it has a nice power curve that go up to 1000w @60km/h, I see them sold used very often at a good price.

Yes not everyone can justify a smart trainer. As @Nigel_Doyle pointed out some races don’t allow non smart trainer on the podium. But even if you don’t make the podium on Zwift Power it is still great training and a lot of fun.